Greg Kinnear (“Little Miss Sunshine”), Lesley Manville (“Phantom Thread”), Keeley Hawes (“Bodyguard”), Rhys Ifans (“Notting Hill”) and Phyllis Logan (“Downton Abbey”) have joined the cast of “Misbehaviour,” alongside the previously announced Keira Knightley, Gugu Mbatha Raw and Jessie Buckley.
Principal photography began Monday on the dramedy, based on the true story of the 1970 Miss World contest and its disruption by the newly founded Women’s Liberation Movement. The film, which will shoot in and around London over the next nine weeks, is directed by Philippa Lowthorpe (“Three Girls”) from an original script written by Rebecca Frayn (“The Lady”) with revisions by Gaby Chiappe (“Their Finest”).
The action takes place in 1970, as the Miss World competition takes place in London, hosted by Bob Hope. At the time, Miss World was the most-watched TV show in the world with more than 100 million viewers. “Claiming that beauty competitions demeaned women, the newly-formed Women’s Liberation Movement achieved overnight fame by invading the stage and disrupting the live broadcast of the competition,” according to a statement.
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When the show resumed, the eventual winner also came as a surprise to the global audience: it was not the favorite, Miss Sweden, but Miss Grenada – the first black woman to be crowned Miss World. “In a matter of hours, a global audience had witnessed the patriarchy driven from the stage and the Western ideal of beauty turned on its head,” the statement added.
The crew includes production designer Cristina Casali (“The Death of Stalin”); make-up and hair designer Jill Sweeney (“The Theory of Everything”); costume designer Charlotte Walter (“The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society”); director of photography Zac Nicholson (“The Death of Stalin”); and editor Una Ni Dhonghaile (“Three Girls”).
The film is being produced by Suzanne Mackie (“The Crown,” “Calendar Girls”) and Sarah-Jane Wheale. Executive producers are Andy Harries and Rebecca Frayn for Left Bank; Cameron McCracken and Jenny Borgars for Pathé; Rose Garnett for BBC Films, Natascha Wharton for the BFI; and Andrea Scarso for Ingenious.
Pathé will distribute the film in the U.K., France and Switzerland, and will handle sales for all other territories.